The car was an older model, the longest size of regular-vehicle car possible. Driving it felt like simultaneously towing and plowing.
There was a thud on the car’s roof. When Hazel got out, a large snakeskin boot was standing upright on top of it.
Was it Liver’s? She looked up in the tree, the same large tree they’d parked in front of the last time she’d visited Liver’s shed, but didn’t spot the shoe’s mate. She couldn’t remember if Liver had worn shoes at all. But if he had? What would make him climb a tree?
Hazel felt herself beginning to run, then sprint. She hadn’t done any type of exercise in years—with Byron she always had the urge to be invisible, which to Hazel seemed to correlate with stillness. Don’t move; don’t be spotted. Blend into the wall.
Liver’s shed was completely gone. In its place was a yard sign declaring the area to be the property of Gogol Industries. Tresspassers would be reported. There was a singular camera mounted on a stick, a tiny orb Hazel heard move to focus on her face. It began snapping several pictures. She didn’t know whether to run or cry or hold up her middle finger.
She ran.
She had to get back to her father’s house; the car she could abandon a few blocks away with the keys inside. It was the least of her worries.
HAZEL WENT STRAIGHT TO HER FATHER’S BACKYARD. SHE WAS SURE there would be another safe there, with a phone inside, just as though she’d never pawned anything at all. It was a game Byron could play forever—she could get rid of the safe every day for the rest of her life, and by morning a new one would be right there waiting.
But it wasn’t identical. When the safe clicked and hummed and its nanoparts opened, all the same electronics were there. But Liver’s necklace of teeth was draped across them.
Byron’s video call was already up on the phone, waiting. His hands were folded in his lap, his eyes directing the circus of monitors. “I saw,” Hazel told him. “Did you have Liver arrested or something?” Hazel wanted nothing more than to hurl the device against the side of the house and make Byron’s image crack into jagged pieces of glass. “This is over the line. Let him go.” She paused. “I’ll come back home as soon as I know Liver’s okay, even if my father won’t agree to treatment. Are you happy? You’ve successfully negotiated a hostage trade.” Being away from The Hub wasn’t worth others getting hurt.
“I’m so glad to hear that you’re coming back, Hazel. We’ve all missed you.”
“If I know and see that he’s okay.”
Byron put his lips together and made a “hmhm” sound. “Whom are you referring to?”
Hazel swallowed. “You didn’t have him killed, did you?”
Byron’s Adam’s apple gave a happy bob. She used to look at its Ping-Pong-ball shape and size and think how his tiny heart could actually be housed there instead of in his chest. “Hazel, who? It seems like you’re referring to an imaginary friend. Someone of whom there’s no trace. You know what happens when you search online for someone imaginary? You don’t find anything. You’re real, and I can prove it by searching for you on the Internet. You’re mentioned countless times. You’re there in photos, listed as my wife.”
Her lower intestines felt like they were filling with very cold yet somehow molten copper. The sensation spread and she had the urge to cut herself down the middle and take out all her organs and bury them. They were screaming inside her like infants who wanted to be swaddled.
“I am having a different reality from the Internet’s reality,” Hazel said. Her voice was quiet and slow. She felt drugged by sad desperation.
“It’s one hypothetical measure of a man, you know,” Byron said. “Or of a person, I guess. Not just men. If someone dies and no one knows about it . . . you see my point. This is something you don’t have to worry about, Hazel. I saved you from anonymity. But don’t be content to stop there. You’re an integral part of something really big, something we’ve been working toward for years. You get to represent millions of dollars of work and groundbreaking research. You’re important. I’m offering you a true partnership here. An enormous place in my legacy. It’s silly to waste any more time. Come home, and think about bringing your father with you. We can probably save his life.”
Stalling would end the conversation more quickly than saying no. “I need some time to mourn Liver,” Hazel said. “I’m feeling pretty upset that he never existed.”
Byron sighed. “Fine. Spin your wheels a little longer. But please don’t test my patience. You can grieve all you want at The Hub. I can even have a black veil waiting for you. Whatever you need, Hazel. I’m a supportive guy.”
The call ended and Hazel found herself down in the backyard’s grass, crawling toward the porch’s sliding-glass door. When she reached it she put her forehead against it and sat there waiting, like a pet who’d been let out to urinate.
Hazel wished her father owned a dog or a cat, some animal who could give her blind comfort. Her parents had never allowed pets. Living things that don’t wear undergarments aren’t welcome on my sofa, her mother used to say. And dogs can’t feel guilt. Not enough guilt, anyway. Not nearly enough to where I’m okay having a relationship with one.
Hazel began to bang her head against the glass, halfheartedly trying to break it but also not minding the way it hurt or the possibility that she might be able to knock herself unconscious if she kept at it long enough. “You and mom were so aloof and cold,” Hazel suddenly yelled. She was yelling through the glass, at her father, even though he wasn’t in the room. What she could see in the glass was her reflection, so she was actually yelling at that, which made her yell louder. “Don’t you think that has something to do with why I married a monster? Are you aware that my whole life you’ve winced whenever I came through the door? It’s not great for self-esteem. In my brain I was all, Am I a human? Am I a tumbleweed made of fiberglass insulation? Am I the polio virus?”